One day, many thousand years ago, somewhere near what is now the national capital lived a man named Devabrata. When his father, a king named Shantanu (ahem), a man apparently not known for his fidelity, like many kings of that era and later, fell in love with a fisherwoman’s daughter and wanted to marry her, young Devabrata took a vow that wows India till date: never to marry, to look after the kingdom all his life, and do away with the “high command” structure of the empire by democratising grassroots-level leaders.

Okay, the last one was not mouthed by Devabrata, a.k.a. Pitamah Bhishma, at least not in the BR Chopra version of the Mahabharat telecast on television. But Rahul Gandhi, a.k.a. the Congress vice-president and now further known as Bhishma-2, put his own spin on the big vow in an attempt to wow the nation in the run-up to the 2014 general elections.

There are different interpretations to what the Gandhi scion said — in fact, most newspapers and online forums put the words between the quotation marks differently — but shorn of pomposity and interpretation, they boil down to the above three:

* If I get married and have children, I will be status-quoist and will like my children to take my place.

* Asking whether you want to be prime minister is to ask me a wrong question.... The prime minister's post is not my priority. I believe in long-term politics.

* Stressing that the Congress's infamous "high command culture" must be axed for more democratisation, he said, I want to give voice to the middle-tier... empower middle-level leaders. There are some parties in India which are run by one leader, two leaders, five to six leaders and 15 to 20 leaders. My priority is to empower MPs as also legislators in states.

# The first could be a mild criticism of the Nehru-Gandhi clan: from Motilal Nehru down to Rajiv Gandhi — his great-grandfather all the way down to his father. While Jawaharlal Nehru’s entry into politics can be explained by the struggle for independence, no one asked him, and his daughter and her son to follow Motilal’s quest to hand over the throne to the progeny.

No one is asking Rahul Gandhi to marry but no one is even asking him to admit his offspring in politics. Just by sheer numbers and age of the party, his own family could be held culpable for bringing this “status-quoist” germ into Indian polity, and his party is perhaps the biggest victim of the disease spread by that germ.

# The second could be a mild self-criticism, having never been known to be too itchy to be in positions where he could be held answerable. He did answer after the Congress debacle in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early last year, and he did own up responsibility. But no one in his party wanted it. There were far too many beavers eager to take the same blame for anyone to pay attention. And he failed similarly, though the extent of culpability could be deemed relatively lower, in most state elections where he held rallies since then, Gujarat and Tripura (where he vowed to “throw the communists out of India”) being the most recent ones. However, he did not bat an eyelid when anointed the party vice-president despite all those blobs.

No one is asking the Amethi MP to give up playing a Test match and jump into a Twenty-20 fray. Eyebrows are — okay ‘were’, now that he has gone public with his desire, or the lack thereof — raised only to check whether he even wants to bat.

# The young Gandhi’s third observation could be a mild criticism of everything — from the family, to the polity, to the party, and even his own good self. Imagine the hilarity he must have sparked among people in his own party when he asked state Congress leaders not to criticise their own chief ministers, and the Congress (high command?) replaced the Punjab PCC chief.

Democracy? Grassroots? Empowerment? Anyone? Fix an appointment with the wannabe bachelor and don’t-wannabe PM Gandhi for details.